sometimes you just feel a lack of drive a lack of zest or motivation and it's really difficult to even begin a task in the first place what if what you do while you're not working is actually the number one determinant of your success at work now Marian DARS co-founder and CEO of the flow research Collective and along my partner Stephen Cutler we have taught thousands of professionals how to access flow States at will now picture this it's 11 A.M you're getting bombarded from seven different directions slack messages emails a call from a boss or employee
you're both under slept and a little over caffeinated and feel that frenzied sense of fatigue and alertness leaving you frazzled this is what some mornings are like well if this sounds familiar it may seem like fatigue or low motivation or chronic stress but it's likely something different what scientists refer to as allostatic load now alistatic load was coined by two researchers at the Rockefeller University McEwen and stellar and allostatic load describes the physical wear and tear on your body and mind that occurs from constantly adjusting to Life's pressures if not properly managed this allostatic load
increases over time and Spills over into subsequent days accumulating in our nervous system and building up and unfortunately most of us never clear the allostatic load that accumulates so you can think of allostatic load kind of in terms of working out if you endlessly did bicep curls without giving your bicep adequate time to recover eventually you'd hit a point where you literally would not be able to lift your water bottle off your desk however if you allow your bicep to recover between the workouts over time your bicep will not just function optimally it will be
stronger than before you'll be able to lift more weight up your desk than you could before an allostatic load works with your nervous system in a similar fashion so when your allostatic load is high it implies that your body and brain are in a constant state of adapting to new stress with your system releasing more stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline altering your body's homeostasis and cognitive functions whereas in contrast flow state is associated with a balance of certain neurotransmitters and hormones in the brain like dopamine norepinephrine endorphins anatomite and serotonin which promotes Focus creativity
and problem solving abilities and this slow cocktail is disrupted under a heavy allostatic load your productivity suffers like trying to drive with a parking brake on but long term it can be even more severe Health can deteriorate career life spans shorten and big goals become increasingly impossible to reach due to physical limitations so to perform at your Peak and get into flow clearing your allostatic load regularly ideally every day after happen and we're going to cover are three ways that you can do this so you can elevate your productivity to new heights week after week
and have your bicep go stronger rather than getting to the point where you can't lift a bottle off the table and this starts with transforming yourself from what we call an average knowledge worker whose biology is constantly dragging them down and working against them impeding their progress into what we call an executive athlete someone who uses their biology as a slingshot that propels them toward their boldest professional goals now a number of years ago two researchers Jim lore and Tony Schwartz wrote an amazing article in Harvard Business Review called corporate athlete and I want you
to consider this analogy from that article the average professional athlete spends the majority of their time training and only a small percentage of their time actually competing several hours a day at most the typical professional the other hand and devotes almost no time to training yet you have to perform on-demand 8 10 12 hours a day or more athletes enjoy several months of off-season most executives are fortunate to get three or four weeks of vacation a year the career of the average professional athlete spans seven years the average executive though is expected to work 40
to 50 years and this is a problem the failure of professionals to train and recover like athletes ends up being a lid on performance conversely the most elite performers treat themselves and think of themselves as executive athletes because they understand one crucial thing which is that energy is the lever point for performance it's not the hours in the day but the energy in those hours and how it's allocated that shapes our performance that's because the number of hours in a day is fixed but the quantity and quality of energy we have available is variable to
Elite Performance is grounded in the skillful mobilization of energy and the elegant back and forth between two states which we're going to talk about exertion and Recovery now let's learn how to channel your energy as an executive athlete the first step is to raise the ceiling with recovery now again Jim Lawrence Tony Schwartz use this term oscillation to refer to a process of rhythmically moving between exertion and Recovery think about the last time you had a heavy workout you're grunting you're sweating you're feeling the burn it feels like your muscles are bulging and growing right
there on the gym floor but in fact the real muscle building happens later during recovery this process is known as super compensation when you stress a muscle through training the muscle breaks down and then after a recovery period the capacity or the strength of that muscle increases however if you continue to stress the muscle endlessly without a recovery period there will be no increase in performance just chronic damage and the reverse is also true if you don't stress a muscle at all your muscles will become increasingly weak over time they'll atrophy and you end up
with limited capacity or strength in both cases though the enemy is not the stress that you're putting on your muscles the enemy is what Tony and Jim call linearity which is the failure to oscillate between these two states of exertion and of recovery now here's the key recovery determines the limits of your exertion which is why it's as important as the work itself that you do when exerting to perform optimally you need to systematically increase your exposure to stress through exertion and then enter these periods of deep recovery which you then emerge out of super
compensated rejuvenated charged up with expanded capacity the equivalent of a stronger bicep after the recovery period now that you know that you should be oscillating though between exertion and recovery and that 50 of what is most important to your professional success is the recovery side of a coin how do you do it because you know what exertion looks like that's just your work that's whatever you've got to do later today or tomorrow whatever tasks you have on your to-do list but how do you actually recover and what even is it and that brings us to
step two which is recovery over relaxation most of us fall into the Trap of equating relaxation and Recovery you know after a strenuous day at work you recline on your couch and you catch up on your favorite Netflix series you might even pop open a beer or two this kind of feels like recovery but unfortunately it's not it's merely relaxation it's best it's like putting a Band-Aid on a leaky pipe it might stop the drip for a while but it does nothing to fix the real underlying problem relaxation feels good subjectively feels like we're recovering
but relaxation doesn't flush out the stress toxins that build up in your system contributing to your allostatic load it's not kick-starting your parasympathetic arrest and digest system into action and it's certainly not replenishing the precious neurochemicals you've used up during the day while exerting and hopefully being in a flow State active recovery on the other hand involves some activity that actively promotes healing and Rejuvenation both mental and physical now when under stress our bodies trigger the sympathetic nervous system fight or flight releasing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline these hormones help us focus and perform but
can cause damage when levels are consistently high so recovery methods activate the parasympathetic nervous system which counteracts the stress response promoting rest digestion recovery it clears out a static load and allows us to recharge this balance or oscillation between sympathetic and parasympathetic activity is key to preventing burnout and then optimizing performance active recovery is kind of like the on off switch the interface to our nervous system the most professionals dream of but never find they never learn how to click that switch active recovery is so important for float that it's in fact non-negotiable and the
final last stage of the flow cycle which includes struggle release flow is recovery so how do you actually do this how do you start to put active recovery into practice well here's a list of active recovery protocols that we recommend and let's walk through a few of these to give you some examples so breath work is one practices like the four seven eight breathing method and box breathing can help stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system the body's relaxation response which can decrease heart rate lower blood pressure and enhanced cognitive function one of the nice things about
breath work is that a lot of people don't succeed with meditation because meditation is is simple but not easy it's complex whereas breath work involves running a certain breathing pattern and if you do so you will get the result it's more Bottoms Up a nervous system based and works great for that reason now the next one is cold therapy cold exposure stimulates the production of norepinephrine a hormone and neurotransmitter that can improve mood alertness and focus and a true triggers vasoconstriction and vasodilation which enhance circulation and Recovery jumping in an ice bath after work rather
than relaxing in front of the TV is going to do tremendous things and a critical point relaxation and Recovery are distinct things that actually result in really effective recovery can be not relaxing at all like sitting in an ice bath but high in recovery you get out of that ice bath an hour later your nervous system your out of stock load is going to be lower even though sitting in that ice bath was the least relaxing thing you could possibly imagine doing now heat therapy regular sauna sessions or hot baths massage your structural integration therapy
myofascial release using tools like foam rollers or lacrosse balls to help alleviate muscle tension again something that results in recovery but doesn't necessarily feel relaxing as we're doing it meditation which we talked about it is more challenging for most but can be a tremendous form of active recovery exercise in the anonymous wide flush that you get post exercise to be phenomenal for regulating the nervous system hiking and spending time in nature amazing forms of active recovery Dr Andrew hewman friend of the flow research Collective and his research out of Stanford has shown that literally just
looking at wide Horizon Lines in nature has a calming soothing effect on the nervous system and then sleep sleep seems passive but sleep's actually a highly active State you're consolidating information that's been newly acquired activation and your amygdala is being reduced your glymphatic system is getting cleared out your muscles are being repaired so even though sleep feels passive it's very active but how do you know if one of these active recovery protocols is actually working for you and maybe you're thinking well what about this other thing that I like to do is that active recovery
does that count well there's two litmus tests to tell whether something is counting for your nervous system as active recovery the first one is an objective one and this is actually using a metric called heart rate variability which is a key indicator of stress and Recovery balance and in the body if you're doing a certain active recovery protocol and your HRV is increasing over time this is likely functioning as recovery for you now the second litmus test is a subjective one and this is that it gives you such a dramatic neurophysiological reset that it feels
like you've had a mini vacation one thing I always like to do is in a Long evening or a full day off I stack a lot of these active recovery protocols together in one go and then I come back into work on Monday with that just back from holidays feeling where your nervous system is all smoothed out you've kind of forgotten about the details of work and the intricacies of the day-to-day and you're ready to hit it again so you want to be able to get that two-week vacation feel in hours with the right active
recovery protocol now if you're someone who loves the grind and you take pride in your ability to outwork others I want you to know this recovery is part of the work recovery gives you the optimal state within which you'll be able to perform your highest quality work if you're working late in the office on a Sunday thinking you're getting ahead of the competition the irony is that the exact opposite is likely happening you'll be beaten by the person who is letting the nervous system level up on the Sunday with recovery protocols because they'll hit Monday
morning with a superior nervous system to yours Peak Performance comes down to out oscillating others rather than outworking others it's fast and deep recovery fast and deep exertion deep recovery deep exertion again and again that rapid oscillation that is what signifies the winners it may even be the case that the more hard charging you are the more you need active recovery because you are more likely to have an increased sympathetic nervous system if this sounds like you the key is to overcompensate recovery that means as you become more swamped sleep more and recover more the
intuitive thing to do is to ditch recovery when things get really demanding and stressful so you can cram in more work but this is completely backwards and counterproductive instead as work piles up and deadlines Loom lean into the academic recovery so schedule your active recovery routines similarly to how you would schedule work tasks bake them in every day take an hour you might have daily practices that you do in the morning or in the evening for Recovery like breath work in the sauna or taking an ice bath or walking in nature and every week you
want to take a day where you stack these sorts of active recovery protocols maybe on that day you go for a swim in the ocean and then you do a workout and then you go for a hike in nature and then you have a nap and then you get a massage something like that stack the day with active recovery protocols and every month we want to do a three day period fully dedicated to recovery which ideally also includes digital detox during this period where each day we're filling our day with these active recovery protocols and
then every quarter you want to take a full 10 days one week plus two weekends to reset and have active recovery be the number one priority and then every year you want to take that full two-week vacation for a complete reboot to Clay clear all that out of static load that's built up over the previous year now there's still one more piece to the puzzle for becoming the executive athlete and this final piece is even more difficult than recovery especially for ambitious professionals Live Like a Lion when you understand these first two pieces that you
need to be oscillating from exertion to recovery and that active recovery is the form of recovery you want not passive recovery then you start to be able to live like a lion because a lion is either sleeping with the pack or sprinting to kill its prey when it's time to kill they do it fast then they return to recover you can work in the same way view it as a ferocious Sprint followed by exorbitant recovery when you make work binary like this you allow your nervous system to recalibrate so your output can reach previously unattainable
levels and it seems counter to what you often hear you've been told to do more faster than the key to Elite Performance is about being able to fit more tasks into your day but that doesn't work that causes busyness about progress and the result is reaching the end of a work day feeling drained looking back and realizing you only did a couple of hours of real work in the first place with the rest of it just being low value distraction reactive work fracturing your attention and sapping your energy it's a terrible feeling wasting away hours
of our life in this mode of half working this gray Zone but not enjoying our lives either so many people's careers get swallowed by this instead executive athletes work in a binary fashion they are more or less always in one of two states either they're working with 100 intensity in sixth gear or they're 100 Switched Off unplugged recovering deeply and enjoying life and they ruthlessly eliminate everything in between fully on fully off that's it and that way the next time you come back to push you can push even harder than before until you integrate active
recovery into your life your limits remain unknown the ceiling can go up and up and up and if you want a cheat code for mastering this process so you can achieve Peak Performance daily watch this video on the flow cycle which talks about all the other elements Beyond recovery and how to master them
